Alertness, Sleep and Attention

Choose a study mode

Play Quiz
Study Flashcards
Spaced Repetition
Chat to Lesson

Podcast

Play an AI-generated podcast conversation about this lesson

Questions and Answers

Which of the following best describes alertness?

  • A state of full awareness of the surroundings. (correct)
  • A state of decreased awareness.
  • A state of being asleep.
  • A state of selective attention.

According to the information provided, what characterizes the individual factor influencing alertness?

  • Physical, emotional, and mental state. (correct)
  • External noises.
  • Presence of circadian rhythms.
  • Level of illumination.

What is the environmental factor listed as determining alertness?

  • Emotional state
  • Illumination and noise (correct)
  • Mental acuity
  • Physical health

Which of the following is true regarding the typical human sleep cycle?

<p>It involves regular electrochemical changes in the brain approximately every 2 hours. (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which physiological change is characteristic of Non-REM sleep?

<p>Increased parasympathetic tone &amp; slowing of EEG (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What neurotransmitter initiates REM sleep?

<p>Acetylcholine (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

During which stage of sleep do most dreams occur?

<p>REM sleep (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to the information provided, when are dreams most likely to occur?

<p>Near dawn (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to the 'cognitive school' explanation, what is a proposed cause of dreams?

<p>The brain's attempt to interpret external stimuli during altered awareness (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which vulnerable population typically experiences increased sleep duration?

<p>Infants (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following conditions is associated with increased sleep duration?

<p>Hypothyroidism (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary purpose of a sleep laboratory?

<p>To diagnose sleep disorders (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the role of thalamo-cortical connections in attention?

<p>Facilitating selective stimulus processing (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the term for focusing on a stimulus?

<p>Voluntary or involuntary attention (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is characteristic of 'dividing attention'?

<p>Handling multiple tasks simultaneously or sequentially (affected in anxiety). (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What can affect attention?

<p>Illness and exhaustion (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which stimulus characteristic is most likely to increase attention?

<p>High intensity (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What sensory process involves encoding, registration and retrieval?

<p>Memory (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following describes the encoding stage of memory?

<p>The process of putting information into memory (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which type of memory is characterized by a limited duration of 15-20 seconds?

<p>Short term memory (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the estimated capacity of short-term memory?

<p>7±2 bits of information (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which strategies can improve memory?

<p>All the above (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What term describes difficulty encoding, registering or retrieval that leads to memory failure?

<p>Amnesia (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following best describes 'proactive interference' in memory?

<p>Old memories cause difficulty with new ones. (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What term describes remembering distorted things that didn't happen?

<p>False memory syndrome (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which process is a mental interpretation of stimuli?

<p>Perception (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the first stage of perception?

<p>Segregation of object from background (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is considered a factor affecting perception?

<p>All the above (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What term describes perceiving stimuli as a whole?

<p>Gestalt perception (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the term for the tendency to see similar and symmetrical stimuli organized together, including the filling in of missing details?

<p>Object grouping (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of these perceptual cues primarily contributes to depth perception in monocular vision?

<p>Height in field and linear intersections (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the effect called when consecutive switching on and off of lamps implies a spark is moving along lamps?

<p>Stroboscopic motion (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What type of motion occurs when a large object moves with a small one static?

<p>Induced motion (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which statement best defines 'thinking'?

<p>A mental activity that organizes or communicates information (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What are the mental representations and properties of concepts?

<p>Attributes (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the aim of critical logical thinking?

<p>Problem solving (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which brain region is responsible for thinking?

<p>Both A and B (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which term is used to describe the ideas disrupted by illness?

<p>Content (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which brain area is associated with language?

<p>Temporal cortex (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

In language development, which milestone typically occurs around 2-3 years of age?

<p>2 words sentence (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does language consist of?

<p>All of the above (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

When assessing a child with delayed language development, which is essential for thorough analysis?

<p>All of the above (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What represents an individual's potential?

<p>Capacity (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the formula for calculating IQ?

<p>IQ = (mental age / chronologic age) x 100 (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

If an individual's mental age is 15 and their chronological age is 10, what is their calculated IQ?

<p>150 (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Flashcards

What is Alertness?

A state of full awareness of the surroundings, gauged by the Glasgow coma scale.

Factors determining Alertness

Factors include physical, emotional, and mental state of the individual, as well as environmental elements like illumination and noise.

What is Sleep?

An active circadian physiological alteration of alertness that allows for physical and psychological restoration.

What is the Sleep Cycle?

A pattern of electrochemical changes in the brain that occurs every 2 hours during sleep.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Non-REM sleep?

Non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep occurs at the beginning and end of each sleep cycle, and offers physical restoration.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is REM sleep?

REM sleep occurs in the middle of each sleep cycle and is important for psychological restoration and dreams.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What are Dreams?

A mental experience that occurs during the REM stage of sleep, including images and ideas not bound by logical thinking.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Sleep Debt?

Duration of sleep increases if sleep deprivation occurs during the day before.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Sleep Deprivation?

Can result in serious mental and physical consequences.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Sleep in Infants

Infants require longer sleep durations and experience longer REM cycles.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Sleep in the Elderly

Older adults generally experience decreased REM sleep.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Sleep during Pregnancy

Pregnant women tend to have increased sleep duration, especially during the first three months.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Attention?

Attention is concentrating on one aspect of something while ignoring other things

Signup and view all the flashcards

The Brain's Role in Attention

Thalamo-cortical connections, especially in the frontal areas of the brain, are responsible.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Attention span

Concentration is concentration is sustained attention

Signup and view all the flashcards

Shifting Attention

Moving from one task to another under voluntary control.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Dividing Attention

Performing multiple tasks either sequentially or simultaneously.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Individual Factors Increasing Attention

Affected by drives, needs, mental expectations, and past-experience.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Stimulus Factors Increasing Attention

Factors like intensity, size, contrast, repetition, motion, novelty, and familiarity.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Memory?

A process by which we store information, involving steps like encoding, registration, and retrieval.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Encoding

Putting information into memory using sensory input.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Registration

Holding encoded information in memory for short or long term.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Retrieval

Retrieval is the process of using information stored in memory.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Short-Term Memory Characteristics

Limited to about 15-20 seconds with a capacity of 7±2 bits of information.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Long-Term Memory Characteristics

Lifetime storage and virtually unlimited capacity.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Function of Short-Term Memory

Handle current information for consolidation in long-term memory.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Factors Improving Memory

Individual's physical, emotional and mental state, organized memories, rehearsal and repetition.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Proactive Interference

Old memories cause difficulty in learning new ones.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Retroactive Interference

New memories impair the recall of old ones.

Signup and view all the flashcards

False Memory Syndrome

Remembering distorted things that didn't happen.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Perception?

interpreting sensory stimuli.

Signup and view all the flashcards

what are the stages of Percetption?

Segregation of object from background, localization, motion determination.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Individual factors affecting perception.

How individual physical, emotional, and mental states

Signup and view all the flashcards

Perception of motion

Constancy and change: Consecutive switch on and off.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Induced motion

Induced motion occurs when a large object moves with a small one static.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Thinking?

A mental activity that organizes or communicates information.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What are Concepts?

Building blocks of mental representations, grouped by common characteristics.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is A Problem?

A gap between the current state and the desired state.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Content of Thinking

Ideas themselves; can be pathological when percept associations are disrupted.

Signup and view all the flashcards

What is Language?

A system of symbols to communicate ideas, including phonemes, morphemes, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics.

Signup and view all the flashcards

Study Notes

  • Faculty of Medicine, Helwan National University
  • Academic Year: 2024-2025
  • Year: 1
  • Semester: 2
  • Module: Locomotor system (Ics) 105
  • By: Dr. Haytham Hasan, Associate Professor
  • Department of Neuropsychiatry

Objectives

  • Understand alertness & sleep
  • Explain attention mechanisms
  • Describe memory processes

Alertness

  • Alertness is a state of full awareness of the surroundings.
  • Alertness is measured by the Glasgow Coma Scale.
  • Factors determining alertness include individual physical, emotional, and mental state.
  • Environment factors that determine alertness include illumination and noise.

States

  • Sleep is an active circadian physiological alteration of alertness used for physical and psychological restoration.

Sleep Cycle

  • A pattern of electrochemical changes in the brain occurs every 2 hours of sleep.
  • Short sleepers (6 hours/night) experience 3 cycles.
  • Long sleepers (8 hours/night) experience 4 cycles per night.
  • Non-Rapid eye movement has 4 sub-stages
  • Stages include Rapid eye movement and non-REM.
  • Non-REM occurs at the beginning and end of each sleep cycle
  • REM sleep occurs in the middle of each sleep cycle
  • Non-REM why: Physical restoration
  • REM Sleep why: Psychological restoration Dreams
  • Stage 1 : 5 minutes
  • Stage 2 : 20 minutes
  • Stage 3 : 30 minutes
  • Stage 4 : N/A
  • Theta waves appear in EEG during stage 1.
  • Sleep spindles appear during stage 2.
  • Delta waves appear during stage 3.
  • Delta waves predominate during stage 4.
  • Most dreaming occurs near dawn, since the ratio of REM sleep increases throughout the night.

Dreams

  • Dreams can be described as mental experiences that occur during the REM stage of sleep.
  • Dreams involve images and ideas unbound by logical thinking.
  • Intense emotions are possible during dreams.
  • Unpleasant dreams can be called nightmares.

Dream Explanations

  • Biological School: Electrochemical changes
  • Cognitive School: Brain interprets stimuli perceived in altered awareness.
  • Analytical School: Freud postulated that dreams symbolize and fulfill repressed wishes in our past.

Sleep in Vulnerable Groups

  • Infants sleep longer (16 hours) and show greater REM.
  • Elderly have decreased REM sleep.
  • Pregnant women have increased sleep duration, especially in the 1st 3 months of pregnancy.
  • Medical illnesses such as hypothyroidism increase sleep, while thyrotoxicosis decreases sleep.
  • Psychiatric illnesses such as depression increase sleep, while anxiety and painful conditions decrease sleep.
  • Sleep debt is the duration of sleep increases if sleep deprivation occurs the day before.
  • Sleep deprivation can cause serious mental and physical consequences.
  • A sleep laboratory is equipped with EEG, EMG, ECG, respiratory function tests, and video to diagnose sleep disorders.

Attention

  • Attention is the process by which stimuli are selected for further processing while neglecting others.
  • Thalamo-cortical connections, mainly frontal, are responsible for attention.
  • This process could be spontaneous involuntary or voluntary i.e. intended concentration on a stimulus

Attention Types

  • Attention span is a concentration sustained attention, affected in ADHD.
  • Shifting attention involves moving from task to task under voluntary control, affected in mania.
  • Dividing attention may be sequential, one task after another, or parallel, several tasks at once, affected in anxiety.
  • Attention can be affected by illness or exhaustion.

Factors Increasing Attention

  • Individual attributes: physical and emotional state (drives and needs) and mental expectations.
  • Stimulus attributes: intensity, size, contrast, repetition, motion, novelty, and familiarity.

Memory

  • Memory is a process by which information is stored.
  • Multiple regions in the temporal lobe are involved in memory.

Memory Involves 3 Steps

  • Encoding means putting information into memory and electrochemical changes when information comes from sensory input.
  • Registration involves holding encoded information in memory until time of retrieval, be it short or long term memory.
  • Retrieval involves using information stored in memory.

Memory Types

  • Short term memory has a limited duration of 15-20 seconds and a limited capacity of 7±2 bits of information. Short term memory involves reverberating circuits.
  • Long term memory has a lifelong duration and a huge capacity. Long term memory involves DNA and protein synthesis.

Memory Functions

  • Short term memory handles current information until important parts are chosen for consolidation in long term memory.
  • Long term memory includes procedural, semantic, and episodic storage.

Factors Improving Memory

  • Individual attributes: includes a physical, emotional, and mental state
  • Attributes of Meaningful memories: organized (rhyming, mind map, chunking, chaining) and rehearsed and repeated.

Disorders of Memory

  • Amnesia (Forgetting) is due to failure of encoding (dementia, anxiety), registration (head trauma & narcotics) or retrieval (dissociative disorders) or also interference.
  • Proactive interference: old memories cause difficulty with new ones.
  • Retroactive interference: new memories impair old ones.
  • False memory syndrome: remembering distorted things that didn't happen under the effect of suggestion.

Perception

  • Perception can be defined as a mental process of interpreting sensory stimuli, or it is the process by which we integrate primary simple stimuli into secondary complex sets of stimuli
  • Percepts are the images of objects or voices.

Perception Stages

  • Segregation of object from background
  • Localization
  • Motion determination

Factors Affecting Perception

  • Individual: (top-down processing) as to physical, emotional and mental state
  • Stimulus organization: (bottom-up processing)

Gestalt

  • Gestalt perception is to perceive stimuli as a whole where every detail influence the perception
  • Similarity: Similar symmetrical stimuli are organized together
  • There is a tendency of closure and continuity of missing details.

Vision

  • Relative size
  • Superposition
  • Height in field & linear intersections implies depth in monocular vision.
  • In binocular vision, two different retinal images from different angles imply depth.

Motion

  • Consecutive switch on and off of lamps implies a spark is moving along lamps, known as stroboscopic motion
  • Induced motion occurs when a large object moves with a small one static.

Thinking

  • A mental activity that goes on in the brain when a person is organizing or communication information to others.
  • Thinking doesn't depend directly upon contact with the immediate physical environment.
  • Thinking can be considered “Language of the Mind".
  • It is the process by which we associate percepts to form concepts (mental representations) and attributes (properties of concepts).
  • Concepts are the building blocks of mental representations and thoughts.
  • A concept is the idea referred to objects such as mental categories we form to group objects, events or situations that share common characteristics or features.
  • Attributes are the elements of stimuli which are abstracted to enable formation of concepts.
  • A problem is a gap between what one finds and what one wishes, which is decreased by a solution until it vanishes.

Types of Thinking

  • Primary Magical - Aim: gratify wishes - Technique: imaginative play/daydreams.
  • Critical Logical - Aim: problem solving - Technique: algorithms.
  • Parallel Creative - Aim: invention - Technique: heuristics

Brain Components

  • Prefrontal cortex and its connections to parieto-temporal association areas are responsible for thinking.

Disorders of Thinking

  • Content is ideas themselves, and associations of percepts are disrupted by illness.
  • Form or process is continuity of ideas; associations are disrupted, and there is discontinuity of ideas.

Language

  • Language is a system of symbols to communicate ideas.
  • listening, speaking, reading, writing
  • Language consists of: phonemes (spoken words), morphemes (written words), semantics (meanings), syntax (grammar) and pragmatics (context)

Language Development

  • Skinner postulates that language development occurs by operant learning.
  • Chomsky postulates a brain imprinted language acquisition device (LAD)

Milestones of Language Development

  • During the first year, babbling laryngeal sounds
  • 1-2 years, vocabulary of around 25 words
  • 2-3 years, 2 word sentences
  • 4 years and above use grammatical words

Requirements for Intact Thought

  • Auditory apparatus (ear)
  • Auditory pathway
  • 1ry & 2ry Auditory cortex
  • Wernick's area (receptive).
  • Broca's or Exner's area (expressive).
  • motor cortex with extra-pyramidal & cerebellar modulation.
  • motor pathways to speech apparatus
  • Speech apparatus: oral cavity (lips, cheeks, jaw, teeth, tongue, pharynx, palate) respiratory system (nose, larynx, trachea, bronchi and lungs) diaphragm and abdominal muscles.

Delayed Language

  • Thorough assessment is required:
  • Ear
  • Speech apparatus,
  • Nervous system
  • IQ assessment,
  • specific assessment of child's behavior to rule out autism.
  • Assessment of emotional disorders.

Abilities

  • Achievement is actual
  • Capacity is potential
  • Aptitude is predicted

Intelligence

  • Intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt to the environment.
  • Spearman intelligence is measurable as a general factor.
  • William Stern offered the intelligence quotient as IQ = (mental age / chronologic age) x 100

Tests to Measure IQ

  • Stanford binet test
  • Wechsler intelligence test

Studying That Suits You

Use AI to generate personalized quizzes and flashcards to suit your learning preferences.

Quiz Team

Related Documents

More Like This

Use Quizgecko on...
Browser
Browser